Heeley City Farm: Time to 'get serious' about making money or risk closure says boss Stuart Gillis

Stuart Gillis aims to restructure the charity to prevent jobs and cuts and continue its “wonderful and amazing story”. But that means protecting the one profitable section - work with vulnerable adults - and “rethinking” the rest. Loss-making areas include the cafe, garden centre and bee products business, he said.

He added: “I get that it is an incredible place with an amazing story that’s really loved. It’s gone through moments of backs-to-the-wall but shown determination to survive. There’s something wonderful and heroic about that.

“Four years ago it was £70,000 in debt and a lot of jobs had to go. This time we are not in debt but on the same trajectory. We need a plan to avoid this every four or five years.”

He added: “The more money we make, the more good you can do.”

Mr Gillis also wants more centralised control of the many “semi-autonomous areas pursuing their own agendas” which were a “massive weakness” at times when they should be working together.

Heeley City Farm was established 41 years ago and employs 50. Mr Gillis has drawn up controversial plans for 18 redundancies and a restructure which he believes are needed to rescue it. But staff have been left stunned by its fall from claimed financial stability to potential redundancies in six months.

Speaking to The Star ahead of a public meeting to discuss the plans, Mr Gillis said: “If we are going to be more commercial we need to be serious about it.”

Acknowledging opposition he added: “Sometimes the going gets tough but right now it’s really important I don’t walk away. I want to help the board stabilise this organisation and address some very long-term issues.”

Residents have launched a petition to save the cafe. Mr Gillis said it was likely to stay open but be contracted out.

The farm was born out of the ashes of a bypass scheme which was successfully opposed by locals. But as well as a powerful story, a vision was needed too, Mr Gillis said.

“Heeley City Farm doesn’t have a vision other than to keep existing. We need one that visitors and funders can be part of.”

Some staff claim they - and their fundraising abilities - have been sidelined since Mr Gillis took over in May. But he insisted the farm had received the same amount of grant income this year - £300,000 - as previous years.

Two months ago he was sacked by the board at the end of his probationary period over costs and the direction of the charity. But he was reinstated after five days.

Mr Gillis said his sacking was linked to ideas about running the farm as a co-operative, which were overturned and the organisation was “desperately trying to work out how to go forward.”

But funders were clear that they wanted to see it run in a conventional way, he insisted. And there were a lot of charities that were commercially successful, such as Age Concern and some hospices.